FBI Had Chances To Avoid Computer Waste: Report

By |June 6, 2005

Some FBI officials began raising doubts about the bureau’s attempts to create a computerized case management system as early as 2003, two years before the $170 million project was abandoned, says a report to the House Appropriations Committee quoted by the Washington Post. By last year, the FBI had identified 400 problems with early versions of the troubled software but never told the contractor. The bureau went ahead with a $17 million testing program last December, even though it was clear by then that the software would have to be scrapped, said the report.

The report says the FBI passed up many chances to cut its losses with the doomed Virtual Case File (VCF), instead going ahead with a system that ultimately cost taxpayers more than $100 million in wasted expenditures. Officials now say that a new program code-named Sentinel will rely on off-the-shelf software rather than the custom approach that contributed to problems with VCF. One official interviewed by the House staff said that, “On no planet I know does it make sense” to spend $17 million on testing the program. Others contended that “it was done for political reasons because the FBI believed it had to deliver something,” said the report.

The legislation marks a major change for Republicans, who long hve embraced a law-and-order rallying cry. Now many GOP senators argue for rehabilitating more offenders rather than long-time incarceration.

An Arizona doctor argues that the government should have learned from previous federal anti-drug strategies that blanket prohibition doesn’t work. He calls for scrapping attempts to curtail opioids and replacing it with “harm reduction” policies.

Expensive medications for inmates can lead to substandard care and delays in treatment, and that may have lasting—even deadly—consequences for incarcerated individuals, writes a prison health care advocate.

Murder rates in the nation’s 30 largest cities are projected to fall by nearly 6 percent this year according to the latest data, undercutting claims that the nation is experiencing a “crime wave,” says the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

School safety commission proposes ending a federal guideline telling schools not to punish minorities at higher rates. The panel largely sidestepped issues relating to guns, although it favors arming some school personnel.